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EVERY PERFUME HAS A TALE TO TELL.

The incredible stories of 100 perfumes from a whole century of scents.

With brilliantly exuberant style, perfume expert Lizzie Ostrom dives into a world of fragrance, introducing us to signature scents; now-lost masterpieces; and potent perfumes from across the decades. She reveals the wild and wonderful launch campaigns; the visionaries behind these mysterious concoctions; and the loyal fans of these little bottles of delight, who sprayed them in abundance.

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If you were to go to my home and open a cupboard or drawer, you would probably find dozens of bottles of perfume waiting to fall out. As you might imagine, I’m a woman who, even now, have more fragrances than I could ever wear in a lifetime, keeps on buying them.

Five years ago, this hobby had nothing to do with my job. I was working in events PR promoting restaurants and hotels. Perfume was a thing on the side. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, but rather than defining it as a ‘thing’, it was more of a compulsion. It had been going on for years. Even as a teenager, in the heady days of dial-up internet, I’d drive my dad crazy, tying up the phoneline looking at perfume reviews.

In 2010, all this suddenly became useful when a friend told me about The Book Club, which was looking for live programming. Out of nowhere I had this idea to host an event about scent.

As someone who loves food, reading, drinking, and learning, I absolutely felt perfume fitted in with this landscape of discovery but it's often left out. I wanted to create an experience which made learning about scent fun, sociable and intelligent, and that spanned pop culture to high culture. Hosting it in a bar was much more inviting than going to a department store with all that pressure to buy.

I inveigled James Craven from London perfume shop Les Senteurs to co-host with me, and together we concocted a whistlestop tour through the twentieth century in perfume. We asked people to describe the mystery contents of some vials we handed out, which meant a lot of wine, a lot of spills, and most crucially, laughter – not least from my nom de plume, Odette Toilette, which is much more fun than my real name, Lizzie Ostrom.

That was meant to be a one-off but so many people came to the first event, I wanted to do more and so a regular series was born. Since then I have hosted perfume events on themes from the scents of outer space to the history of male fragrances from Rakes to Rambo, and Perfumes and Mythology.

I still get a thrill from sampling an unusual fragrance with a tantalising story, and it’s been so much fun bringing their stories, from the sublime to the everyday, to life through my book and my events.